Veteran Pikes Peak International Hillclimb driver Robin Shute has won the overall event four times, with his first title coming in 2019. His wins have all been in purpose-built, open-cockpit racecars from Wolf. For 2025, he shook things up by piloting a highly customized 1967 Camaro built by Mike Dusold, which has been campaigned at Pikes Peak in the past as well as in the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. The Camaro has seen several improvements over the past several months as Shute helped guide its transformation, and it seems to have paid off. It placed fifth in the Unlimited class and ninth overall on the shortened 2025 course. An on-board video shows how wild a ride up Pikes Peak can be with 1,400 hp on tap.
The race car is a bit of a Camaro of Theseus situation, having undergone near constant evolution as of late. We’ve seen it at various events, from Holley LS Fest to SEMA, and it’s never the same. While the body still looks very much like a 1967 Camaro, much of what lies underneath has changed. The solid rear axle was ditched in favor of an independent rear suspension. A previous iteration used a rear-mounted Corvette transmission and C6-derived suspension. Now there’s a paddle-shifted Sadev sequential six-speed transaxle handling all that torque. Underneath the resculpted hood, you’ll find a tube chassis with an exotic pushrod suspension and anti-sway bar system.
Powering the Camaro is a pushrod V-8, but not an iron-block 302 or 396. Instead, a 7.0-liter LS throws down as much as 1,400 rear-wheel horsepower by huffing boost from a massive single turbo. The air gets thin at 14,000 feet, and boost is a great way to help maintain power as the course climbs up the mountain. “Essentially, we are twice the weight of the Wolf, and twice the horsepower of the Wolf,” said Shute. All the weight and power called for huge Alcon brakes and, specifically for Pikes Peak, the car got a new cooling system with a rear-mounted radiator.
Moving the radiator helped shift the weight balance, but also required massive ducts to route air over the heat exchanger. Intakes were mounted on the C-pillars, eliminating the quarter glass and all visibility out of the rear of the car in the process. The rowdy Camaro now uses a rear-facing camera and a monitor mounted in the cockpit to see what’s behind. With no radiator up front, the nose of the car was reshaped to reduce drag, allowing air to flow over a downward-sloping hood. Because the hood only slopes down in the center and the fenders remain relatively unchanged, other than flaring to accept wider wheels and tires, the car still resembles a Camaro, particularly in profile. The effect is reminiscent of the R-Wing on the new Dodge Charger EV. Cooling air is still drawn in from the front, but it’s pulled in below the previous grille area and ducted to the front brakes and through the engine oil cooler.
Besides the reshaped front sheet metal, the Camaro features numerous aerodynamic aids. From the ground effects in the front to the fender extractors and huge wing, the Camaro now cuts a cleaner path through the air and keeps itself planted to the tarmac. Shute has a great walk-around video that explains even more about the car, which you can check out below. We’re just hoping to see it in action at an upcoming Optima event.
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